Downwards Descent
by frosty polar bear
Summary: Animus dragons are blessed with a wondrous power, the power to create and enchant objects to do their bidding. However, with a great gift comes a terrible price. A price that Heatwave, a SandWing animus, has had to pay.


The name's Heatwave, and I am a male SandWing dragon. Although, I'm not the typical and ordinary SandWing you'd expect to see. In fact, I am of a special breed of dragons in the land of Pyrrhia; I am an animus dragon.

Animus dragons are blessed with what many dragons would call a gift. And many of those dragons are unfortunately misinformed. This power that they call a 'gift' is much more akin to a curse. Yes, it is true animus dragons have the power to create and enchant objects to do their bidding. However, this power comes with a terrible price... a price I regretfully have paid for...

Your own soul.

This curse has robbed me of my life, my personality, and my lover. My very own sanity ripped away from my body as the supposed gift I was born with siphoned it with each use of my power. It's twisted my morals, mixing right from wrong and wrong from right. What the curse left behind was a cold, empty shell of the dragon I once was.

Nowadays, I roam the deserts in the Kingdom of Sand aimlessly, desperately trying to avoid all contact with dragonkind lest my madness and insanity completely consumes me. Each passing day becomes harder than the previous. The fight to keep sane, it is a fight I know I am slowly and close to losing.

The malicious voice inside my head constantly speaks to me, influencing my actions for the worse. Its evil presence continues to gnaw away at the remainder of whatever shred of sanity I have managed to save. It is a parasite I can feel lurking in the deepest corners of my mind, becoming stronger each day while it continues feeding me with dark, violent thoughts. I cannot get rid of this darker half as it is the product of the curse. Essentially, the voice is the pieces of my tainted soul, lost to the clutches of my magic.

I've gone too deep into the never-ending abyss I've fallen in. There's no saviour to save me from this horrible fate. There's no hope left for me to cling to. This madness is my destiny and has been since the day I hatched, and sooner or later, this madness will be my undoing.

* * *

I open my eyes from my slumber, my heart beating painfully fast and my body trembling as I awake from a nightmare with a groan. I scan my surroundings, noting the black that blanketed the sky.

I struggle to sit up from the tangled heap my body is in. After some time, I get myself into a comfortable enough position. The cool sand underneath me shifting as I moved and stretched.

I tilt my head to face the ground, drooping my wings to lie them on the sandy floor lazily. My tail sweeps the sand back and forth as it lays there uselessly. My eyes met my shaking forelegs as I try my hardest to forget the horrible dream. The voice creeping around in my mind laughs at the futile attempts I give to resist my inevitable downfall to insanity.

I think of my past, trying to remember the fading memories I have. Memories from a time of when my sanity was still intact come to surface. For a moment, I felt a rush of joy come over me. It was an unfamiliar emotion to me now and I cherished every moment I could get from it. Thoughts of my old mate, Scorpion, came to my head. I remembered her beautiful figure and her perfect smile, the way she made me feel when we were alone together. The moment of reprieve is a nice change compared to the constant misery I suffer in. I let myself wallow in the happiness I felt.

That was my crucial mistake.

I let my guard down. I let myself get too comfortable. It was something that my madness preyed upon on, happiness. In a flash, those memories of Scorpion were ripped away from my thoughts. My voice cries out desperately in deep sorrow while my talons claw at the sand, begging the voice for just a few more seconds if not minutes to see my mate in my mind again. My tormentor grants me no such wish.

 _You stupid fool! You don't need that wretched dragon! You have power beyond your wildest dreams! You have ME!_ The voice shrieks. I cower onto the sandy floor in fear and I begin to violently shake. My tormentor shows me my most feared memory as punishment.

"No...! NO! Anything but that!" I cry out, but I am powerless to do anything.

 _But it is what you deserve._ The voice whispers back.

* * *

Scorpion and I were lying on the side of a sand dune together, enjoying the other's company as we watched the blue sky. The warm breeze from the wind slid gently along our scales, softly hugging our bodies as we lay. I felt myself look to her face, and I wished this moment would last forever. She stared right back, saying something I couldn't comprehend. I didn't respond to her, I wasn't in control of my body. My stare began to frighten her and she called out to me, asking if I was alright. I wanted nothing more than to tell her to run away from me, to stay away for her own safety. But I couldn't and was left watching her beautiful smile turn into one of worry. She brushed a foreleg over my own, not understanding why I was acting the way I was.

My heart clenched painfully as I remembered what I was to do next.

The insanity building inside of me was leaking out, my thoughts began to haze, and my morals were all but thrown out of a window. In one fluid motion, I rolled on top of her and pinned her down, raised my tail, poised to strike the venomous tip straight into her heart. She screamed out in fear as I stabbed downwards, feeling my tail pierce her scales.

I was forced to watch, feeling twisted delight as the sight of her writhing form filled me with a hunger for more. Cruelly, I twisted my tail which was still lodged in her chest, and she howled screams loud enough to shatter glass. I wanted to cry, to scream out apologies, to tell her how I wasn't in control of my actions. No such thing was possible. Instead, laughter erupted from my throat. I enjoyed doing this.

We locked eyes, her's filled with sadness and betrayal and she uttered one word before she passed into an eternal sleep, "Why?"

This is my most feared memory: killing Scorpion.

* * *

I come back to reality slowly and I find tears streaming from my eyes. The voice, to my surprise, wasn't scorning me. Rather, it was whispering soothing words of comfort like a mother does for her hurt dragonets. Slowly, I relax and the voice lulls me into a false sense of security.

I felt safe and tired. The darkness was creeping in slowly around the edges of my vision as I submitted myself to it. A warm, numbing sensation spread itself over my scales, starting from my tail going all the way to the tip of my snout, and I shuddered in immense pleasure. Moments passed and the darkness had completely clouded my sense of vision.

A new, uncharacteristic urge surged through me, a feeling that I previously would've felt nauseated by doing. It was the urge to hurt something, to kill. That was it, the last few vestiges of sanity I had left becoming completely tainted by the madness. After two long decades since I betrayed Scorpion, the curse has finally broken me and won.

Suddenly, the dark embrace of the voice no longer felt safe or comforting. It became agonizingly painful, my heart began seizing up. On instinct, my talon reaches to clutch the area where my heart is as I gasp out pained noises. I struggle to gain control of my body, willing it to move and obey my commands. Alas, my fate is sealed. I heard nothing but the echoing laughter of my tormentor's amusement as I lost control of myself, my consciousness beginning to fade and be replaced by something more malicious.

Three moons above, forgive me for what I'll become.


End file.
